That line sits inside “Burden,” the first full hit on On Borrowed Time’s debut album “In The Dark Before The Dawn,” and it gives the record its first proper shape: pressure, collapse, motion, then the stubborn push toward whatever comes after.
Out today, May 29th via Omen Records, the album also lands at radio the same day, pulling together ten tracks that move through melodic hardcore, punk, post-hardcore, 90s punk revival energy, and the kind of skate-punk speed that still works best when it sounds like five people trying to outrun their own heads.
On Borrowed Time come from Dorset, England, and have been building this version of themselves since 2018. The band is James Leatherbarrow on vocals, formerly of Death Of An Artist; Damien Carter on lead guitar and backing vocals, formerly of Fort Vallance; Damian Bruton on bass and backing vocals, formerly of Erica Drive; Dan Jeanne on guitar, formerly of Towers; and James Davies on drums, formerly of Rapids!
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The influence points are there — Have Heart, Defeater, Bane, Comeback Kid — but “In The Dark Before The Dawn” is less about paying dues to a lane than tracing one long drop and the slow return from it. The band talk about the album as movement: darkness, resentment, distance, exhaustion, reset, endurance, then a last flash of light before the abrupt ending of “Love Song.”
“Twilight” starts in near-silence. “We start the journey in the dark as it were,” the band say. “Twilight takes us from silence in the darkness to a hard hitting crescendo, setting the tone and leading into Burden. A subtle introduction into a hard hitting ending.”
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“Burden” comes straight out of it, and the title does not hide much. “The music was written from a dark place in the early hours of the morning and that angst can really be felt in this track,” they say. It pulls together the first full version of the band’s sound on the record: two-step beats, fast punk verses, bigger melodic turns, and that halftime anthemic bounce that keeps circling back like a crowd trying to lift the song off the floor. “This is a track to bring together all those burdened souls.”
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After that first hit, “Same Blood” opens with space. “After a pretty full on start to the album, Same Blood needed to start with a bit of breathing space so we start it with a long clean intro,” they say. The tempo then jumps into a fast skate-punk verse before the song turns toward a more emotional ending. Its centre is simple and still hard to live by: the world keeps dividing itself politically and culturally, but underneath that, everyone is human. “We are all ultimately human and the same no matter where we come from or what we look like.”
“Solitude” is where the record starts to curdle. “Solitude was one of the first songs where the record started to feel genuinely ugly in the right way,” the band say. “A lot of the earlier stuff still had one foot in trying to make sense of things, but this was the point where that stopped and the resentment properly surfaced.”
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It came from a period when distance was not theoretical. People who had been there for years started feeling unreachable. Conversations became colder. Silence became easier than repair. “The ending of the track still feels important now because it’s not some big emotional breakthrough,” they say. “It’s more like accepting the separation and sitting with it. On the record, it feels like the moment the spiral stops being passive and turns into something intentional.”
“Faded” shifts the gaze outward, but it does not let the record off easy. Musically, it is one of the most immediate and upbeat songs here. Lyrically, it comes from burnout. “It was written around watching somebody repeatedly burn through the goodwill of everyone around them while never really changing, no matter how many chances they got,” they say. “At the time there was still frustration there, but looking back now the song feels more detached than angry — like the point where you stop trying to drag somebody back to themselves and just let them disappear into whatever path they’ve chosen.”
Coming after “Solitude,” it feels like the first time the album looks outside itself. What it finds is still bleak, just less close to the skin.
“Reset” is exactly that. A short clearing in the middle of the record, built from clean guitar tones, swinging drums, and a stripped-back approach after the faster tracks before it. “After the first part of our journey we felt we needed a palate cleanser to separate the noise,” the band say. “A chance to reset before we enter the more emotional end of the album.”
That emotional centre starts with “Waiting For You (In The Dark Before The Dawn).” The band describe it as the point where the record stops fighting and starts sitting with the aftershock. “A lot of the songs before it are tangled up in frustration, distance, resentment or trying to cut ties cleanly, but this one sits in the aftermath of all that where things become quieter and harder to avoid.”
It was written during a time when leaving parts of life behind felt necessary, but not clean. Moving on physically did not stop places, people, or old versions of yourself from staying in your head. “The title track placement made sense pretty naturally because it carries the feeling the whole album revolves around: sitting in uncertainty for longer than you thought you could, hoping something changes before you disappear completely into it,” they say. “By the end, the ‘dark before the dawn’ line stopped feeling hopeful and started feeling more like endurance.”
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“Last Step” stays in that same emotional centre. “I wrote the music to this one during a tough time in my life and you can really sense the melancholy in the epic ending,” they say. “I guess a lot of the music was written as a cathartic process which is evident around this stage of the album.” It does not rush to brighten the room. It lets the ache hang there.
“After All” is where the record finally picks itself back up. After the melancholy of the two songs before it, the band wanted to bring some positivity back in, leaning closer to a more typical hardcore song. “This is the point in the album where the light starts to break through,” they say. The ending was written for audience participation, with added vocal dynamics giving the album a different lift before its final track.
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Then comes “Love Song,” featuring Mark Betteridge. The closing track keeps the album’s emotional fast riffs and pushes them toward a final crescendo, only to end abruptly, as if the record cuts the lights before anyone is ready. “Another emo one to finish things off,” the band say.
Betteridge was not pulled in as a random guest. He is the vocalist in Towers with guitarist Dan Jeanne, and he was in Death Of An Artist with James Leatherbarrow and Dan back in the day. He has also helped On Borrowed Time by filling in on guitar several times, so the collaboration came from shared history rather than a cold feature request.
“We wanted to use this opportunity to collaborate with someone close to us,” the band say. “We had a few people in mind but once we discussed it, we all agreed we should collaborate with Mark Betteridge. So we are all very close to Mark, he has helped us out during our time as a band by filling in on guitar numerous times, so it felt right to get him involved on the album. Not only that, but he has an incredible voice. Given the album is full of shouting, Mark’s vocals really added another dynamic to it.”
Once they had agreed on Mark, “Love Song” was the clear place for him. The song had space at the end, and it needed a different voice in that emotional final stretch. “After sending across the track and myself and James briefing him on his section and the vibe, it wasn’t long before Mark came back with lyrics and his own melody to add in,” they say.
He joined the band for a day in the studio, and the moment landed quickly. “I remember the first time I heard him singing it, in that environment and immediately knew we were onto something,” they say. “It was emotional to be honest as it felt like the final piece of the puzzle, the cherry on the cake as it were.”
When the final mixes came back, the band say the song felt different. Mark’s voice brought out another side of James’s, and the closing track started to feel less like an ending tacked onto the album and more like the last door in the hallway.
“In The Dark Before The Dawn” is out now via Omen Records. Mark Betteridge will join On Borrowed Time at selected dates so the band can play “Love Song” with the full vocal part intact.
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